Where are all the racetracks?

Raise your hand if you competed in a club-organised motor sport event in your younger days.

Now keep them up if you're still competing.

Congratulations... You're not dead yet, but you are one of a dying breed.

Motor sport in Australia is being squeezed out by any number of social and economic factors. It's harder than ever to find places close to major urban centres where you can go off-roading or rallying – usually for environmental reasons – or where you can trailer a track car to compete in a bitumen speed event, pitted against like-minded enthusiasts.

The slow demise of racetracks around the country is largely a result of our insatiable demand for residential land, says auto industry PR veteran Edward Rowe. According to Rowe, who numbers Maserati and Lotus currently among the brands he has promoted, Australian track enthusiasts don't enjoy the favoured status their counterparts do in other markets.

"Obviously track-day cars are a much bigger business in the UK and in Europe..." Rowe told motoring.com.au earlier this week.

"Unfortunately we don't have that industry here, because there's a lack of venues, to be honest.

"And the venues that are here are very heavily subscribed... whereas in the UK you've got half a dozen tracks that have been built or developed specifically for track days. They don't have motor sport or public events – they're specifically to take your car on and drive it. They range from road-style tracks through to places like Bruntingthorpe, which is one of the longest runways in Europe..."

What's the difference between Australia and the UK? Has there been some sort of cultural shift away from motor sport in the southern hemisphere?

"I actually think it has more to do with land value, because what you've seen – particularly in Sydney – is a whole stack of race tracks disappear under building sites, the most recent being Oran Park," Rowe answers.

"You know where the Audi building is in Sydney? That area, Zetland, [was] Australia's first race track – cars and dogs. Not on the same night...

"It became the Leyland factory, where the P76 was built, and then it stood empty for a long time...

"Other than Eastern Creek the nearest track to Sydney now is Wakefield Park. There used to be a track at Katoomba, there used to be one at Orange...

"Eastern Creek is just packed now... absolutely booked out, and charges accordingly.

"In Melbourne you've still got Calder and Sandown... and Phillip Island... and Winton up the road – whereas here in New South Wales it's a very rapidly diminishing number of venues."

Rowe at this point offers an anecdote to illustrate just how extreme the situation has become.

"There was a Lotus event, just at the end of November, and it was organised by the Sydney Lotus dealer – and they had to hold it at Winton [Victoria]... and they had customers coming down from as far afield as Brisbane to drive their cars..."

Even major motor sport venues are safe for only so long as developers can be kept occupied elsewhere, Rowe suggests.

"When Eastern Creek was built there was nothing around it. Now it's got a major industrial area on the other side of the Great Western Highway – and it's being ringed very rapidly by housing."

Our escalating property boom is a symptom of a country grappling with proportionally massive population growth. Melbourne's population is growing rapidly indeed, but that's likely due in part to Sydney already reaching critical mass. Rowe, based in Sydney, can see it happening in real time.

"When I do photography of commercial vehicles, and want to get a picture of the vehicle being used or an indication of what it will be used for, these housing estates out there that they're building are very useful. They're great for photography because there's not one house being built, there are 20 houses being built – with tarmac roads. It makes life very easy.

"But what's happened... I do that perhaps every two or three months, and every time I do it I have to go three or four kilometres further west.

"I can remember in my time when there was bush between Sydney and Parramatta..."

While the housing boom is a major factor in the gradual decline in the number of racetracks around the country, it's not like Australia was blessed with a large number in the first place. Rowe says that the UK's plethora of tracks is a natural outcome of World War II.

"The UK is absolutely riddled with ex-bomber bases. And the significance of the bomber bases, as opposed to the World War II fighter bases: pretty well all the World War II fighter bases were grass strips. After the war they disappeared pretty quickly.

"But the bomber bases, because of the weight of the planes taking off – even the World War II ones, let alone the cold war [planes] – had to have runways about two to three metres deep.

"It's only become in the last 10 years economic to dig those runways up and return them to farmland."

Maybe it's about time for motor sport followers to blockade further housing development around the RAAF base at Point Cook – itself once a venue for the AGP...

... or maybe motor sport fans need to form co-operative societies to buy viable land and establish their own race tracks on that land, offering country-club-style memberships like the Monticello facility in New York State in the USA.

Sooner or later, there won't be many options left.

Australia's lost racing circuits (courtesy of Edward Rowe)
• Adelaide International Raceway, Adelaide, South Australia (still has limited use)
• Amaroo Park, Sydney, New South Wales
• Aspendale Racecourse, Aspendale, Victoria
• Ballarat Airport, Ballarat, Victoria
• Brenock Park Speedway, Ferntree Gully, Victoria
• Brisbane Exhibition Ground, Brisbane, Queensland
• Canberra International Dragway, Fairburn, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
• Canberra Street Circuit, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
• Castlereagh International Dragway, Sydney, New South Wales
• Catalina Park, Katoomba, New South Wales
• Caversham Airfield, Caversham, Western Australia
• Claremont Speedway, Perth, Western Australia
• Fisherman’s Bend Race Track, Melbourne, Vicotria
• Gnoo Blas Motor Racing Circuit, Orange, New South Wales
• Hume Weir Motor Racing Circuit, Albury-Wodonga, New South Wales
• Liverpool Speedway, Sydney, New South Wales
• Longford Circuit, Longford, Tasmania
• Lowood circuit, Tarampa, Queensland
• Macarthur Park Street Circuit Australian Capital Territory (motorcycle/sidecar racing only)
• Mt Druit Race Track, Sydney.
• Oran Park Raceway, Sydney, New South Wales
• Port Wakefield Circuit, Port Wakefield, South Australia
• Rowley park speedway, Adelaide, South Australia
• Surfers Paradise International Raceway, Gold Coast, Queensland
• Sydney Showground Speedway, Sydney, New South Wales
• Templestowe hillclimb racetrack, Melbourne, Victoria
• Tralee Speedway, Queanbeyan, New South Wales
• Victoria Park/Zetland*
• Warwick Farm Raceway, Sydney, New South Wales

* Believed to be the first car racing track in Australia. It became Leyland’s home from 1950 to 1975 and is now the home of Audi Australia and a massive housing estate.

Picture of Frank Gardner in a Repco-Brabham-Maserati at Warwick Farm in 1966, courtesy of Lance J. Ruting

Also pictured: Kevin Bartlett in an Alfa GTA

Map of Oran Park courtesy of whereis.com